2016
FIRST HALF REVIEW
Identity Theft
Identity theft has clearly become the tactic of choice for hackers, cyber criminals and other bad actors. Whereas in previous years theft of payment and nancial data dominated the headlines — think of the Home Depot and Target attacks, for example — the past six months has seen the continuation of a trend that began in 2015 in which the theft of personal identi able information has dominated.
The rst half of the year is also notable in that it could put us on track for a one billion-plus year of data records lost or stolen.
These are among just some of the key ndings of the latest Breach Level Index produced by digital security technology provider Gemalto. The numbers in the report are sobering, and even
stunning, considering how much of an emphasis organizations have been placing on information security in recent years.
Key First Half Findings
According to data collected in the Breach Level Index (BLI), there were 974 data breaches worldwide in the rst half of 2016, up 15% from the 844 breaches during
the previous six months (July to December 2015), and up sharply from the 766 data breaches in the rst half of 2015.
More than 554 million data records were lost or stolen in the rst
half of 2016, compared with some 424 million lost or stolen during the previous six months. That represents a dramatic increase
of 31%. And considering that
3
INTRODUCTION
is King
From a time perspective, 3,046,456 data records were stolen or lost every day during the rst half; 126,936 data records were stolen or lost every hour; 2,116 were stolen or lost every minute and 35 were stolen or lost every second.
510 of the data breaches (52%) had an unknown or unreported number compromised records, the true number of lost or stolen records is much higher.
To create the Breach Level Index, Gemalto, a leading global provider of digital security solutions, gathers extensive information about data breaches worldwide, using sources such as Internet searches, news articles and analyses and other resources. The data gathered
is then aggregated into the Index, a database that Gemalto continually maintains. The data is analyzed in terms of the number of breaches that occur; the number of data records lost; and data breaches by industry, type of breach, source and by country or region.